The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday confirmed the orders of a lower court awarding death sentence to a 26-year-old man, who allegedly raped a seven-year-old Dalit girl and killed her to hide the crime.

In all fairness, the judgment of the trial court fulfilled all the touchstones to determine that it is one of the rarest of rare cases for imposition of death sentence, as imposition of any other punishment much less life imprisonment is completely insufficient and inadequate and would not meet the ends of justice, the court said.